Apocalyptic Vision in the Rabbit Tetralogy of John Hoyer Updike: a Postmodern Study
Yang Zhao1, Jit Pal Aggarwal2
1Yang Zhao, Ph.D Researcher, LPU, Yichun University, China.
2Jit Pal Aggarwal, Associate Professor, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara (Punjab), India.
Manuscript received on 03 May 2019 | Revised Manuscript received on 15 May 2019 | Manuscript Published on 23 May 2019 | PP: 325-327 | Volume-7 Issue-6S5 April 2019 | Retrieval Number: F10540476S519/2019©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: John Updike’s vision of life and american society is apocalyptic as he wrote novels to depict the present dilemmas of the Americans and the future challenges of the country and the global world. he was also confronted with the riddle of life and existence like Dostoevsky and with a view to find the answers to the mysteries of life and truth he turned to Kierkegaard and Karl berth who had evolved the “dialectical method” to explore reality and truth. berth’s dialectical method was derived from Kierkegaard who believed that truth is not found in the operation of hegel’s method of thesis and anti-thesis but rather in the dialectical tension between truth and truth. Kierkegaard wrote: “every truth is truth only to a certain degree; when it goes beyond, the counter point appears, and it becomes untruth” (Kierkegaard, word of god and word of man 206). John updike stated that the purpose of his writing novels and stories is to “examine everything for god’s fingerprints.” in the 1960’s when he started writing his name was associated with other writers such as john barth, Robert cover and Thomas pynchon busy in experimenting new themes and strategies. updike ignored the main stream of contemporary fiction and distanced himself from the contemporary writers. his mission was to write a new kind of fiction; to create a new kind of world; to depict the new future of mankind the way karl marx had done. updike’s 1500 pages rabbit tetra logy is a coherent and unified work presenting harry angstrom portrayed after bakhtin, “a heteroglossic man representing the main currents of american post-war culture. up dike employed the post-modern techniques and literary devices borrowing from karl barth, kierkegaard, bakhtin and jean-francois lyotard. the historical development of an apocalypse within history is quite interesting. t.s. eliot also forewarned of the cultural catastrophe after the world war 11. d.h Lawrence, Hemingway, william faulkner, henry miller and other writers of the twenties and thirties used images of death and destruction of the civilization and expressed their apocalyptic vision in their own way but john updike expressed his concern for the future of america and for the entire mankind in his novels.
Keywords: Apocalyptic, Heteroglossic, Tetra Logy, Dilemmas Postmodern, Forewarned, Dialectical.
Scope of the Article: Vision and Speech Perception